Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Whitethread Institute Courses 2018 19
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Rahmanir Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa Salatu was Salam
ala so you will more serene while he was assaulting me he urged
Marina beret. So Hamdulillah this time last year we had our Open
Day. It was exactly it was the 30th of July I think so just a few
days it was this similar weekend last year that we had the initial
open day
and hamdulillah since then Allah subhanho wa Taala has been very
generous, very grateful to us that
after completing this year and preparing for the next year, we've
had
in the first year I'd like I'd just like to mention two things
before we start speaking about the courses.
In terms of
what we've had during the year, we've had Hamdulillah, about 60
Very good students.
These 60 students, they were both people who are on site, and people
who are online.
And
we were blessed with the visit of Mufti Salman mensual booty who
came and did the first inaugural lecture lesson of
Asheboro another word for the Iftar class. So that was
Mashallah. great honor for us to have that. Then over the course of
the year, we've had several visitors, Mashallah. And while we
haven't done too much promotion, we haven't had time because to be
honest, we've just been focused on the courses delivering the
courses, we haven't had time to do any major kind of promotion or
anything like that.
But hamdulillah Allah subhanaw taala has blessed us with the
visit of mostly duck Issa. So his course on
also if it's very short course and also lift up primarily targeted at
the
main the main scholars of the country. And because of the
blessing of that, we had people like Mufti Shabbir serve and Mufti
Abdus Samad and numerous other Mufti is from around the country.
In fact, what many people remarked that it would have been very
difficult to have
gotten all of those names of the search and all these from the
various different modalities, the various different modalities to
have come together under one roof, it would have been very difficult
to have done that not that they've got anything against each other.
It's just that to get so many people who are so busy running
their own institutions and leading to have come together like that,
so Hamdulillah we were honored to be able to host that here as well.
Then, we've had a visit from Principality of Jordan, and he
donated approximately 200
titles, but 200 titles to our library, Mashallah. Our library is
primarily focused on fic and Aqeedah books right now, because
of lack of space. Now, Hamdulillah we had Mufti Sarfraz from the
Birmingham fic Council, come and give a lecture to the Iftar and
jurisprudence students on I believe it was food and medical
Messiah.
Those are the two subjects he covered. And then we had both the
Ashfaq who's one of the Northeast from the jam, the Jamia Masjid of
Bombay, come along and give a very in depth a very, very wonderful
seminar on the whole concept of giving fatwa and how to divide the
various different levels of that, and the processes in that.
So hamdulillah there's been numerous other visitors as well.
But the these are the I just want to suffice with this. The whole
point
what are we trying to do different? What we're trying to do
different here is quite something quite simple.
We what we want to do is we just want to try to take those items
and animals, those people who consider themselves to be Muslim
scholars. And you know, we have between I would say about probably
700 to 1000, probably around London, just around the London
greater London area which is huge. Mashallah. So all we want is that
we just want to equip them
with the ability to research for themselves. Right.
So we just want to make them feel very confident that when they're
when they're faced with some kind of question, whether it's their
own question or whether it's a question that somebody asks them
in the position of being an imam position or being a chaplain,
position of being
maybe even a school teacher or a mother as a teacher or a mucked up
teacher, or just the law
Local Ireland because you may be the first and only graduate, maybe
the only Ireland and Alima in your area. And if that's the case, if
you're in one of those areas, I know we're spoilt for choice in
our local areas here. But if you're in one of those other
areas, then the benefit would be that or the challenge for you
would be that everybody would consult you. And you'd have to be
the alarm of the area. Because they say you and study for six
years, that they probably have nothing to do with it. But they
would probably say that we sent you to madrasah right? As though
they've got something to do with it. And and they'll say that you
can't answer our questions. So I think one of the biggest problems
that we're seeing among people who have studied is that they just
don't feel confident. So we're trying to remedy that that's
really the main thing so that you can research, you will be able to
know where to find the material. And there is no element the world
is there's no item in the world. We know that from the study of
Musa alayhis salam.
But what it means to be equipped is you know where to look at the
right time. That's the most important thing.
Because nobody can know everything, right? Anybody who
claims to know everything, that that'd be quite a major challenge
because LM is endless. So the idea is that we try to give the tools
to do the research, if it's a thick question, which books to
consult, which authorities to consult the various different
differences between those authorities who to contact and
then
I think what's very important is to tie in all of that whether
they've been EFTA or theology, or the jurisprudence that we've been
dealing with so far, and then inshallah next year when we deal
with
the FCA is to understand what are the current trends and the current
day challenges in all of those subjects? So what is going on when
it comes to Iftar? And what are the challenges to the whole fic
discussion?
Whether that be the fitna that's created aspects of Fick aspects of
jurisprudence aspects of
tafseer that are being challenged. For example, recently, we saw
challenge about the authenticity of Sahil Bihari right. So if Sahil
Buhari can be challenged, and then there's people have challenged the
Quran, orientalist, have been doing that for for four centuries,
we need to be able to respond to that. Now, you may not have all of
the answers in your mind. But if you can know where to look for
them, that's very important. You can know where to look for that.
That's really the main thing. No ILM can expect to know everything.
But when the time arises, if you're a chaplain, you're a school
teacher, you're a mother, as a teacher, or an or an Imam, you
know where to go and look, or you know who to consult that that, I
think is very, because I mean,
if you get asked the question, and you have no idea where to look,
and you're supposed to know it, and you're supposed to know where
to find it, you just don't know where even to start. That's really
a feeling of great helplessness. And that, psychologically is very
damaging.
That that's basically what we're trying to do here to provide that
kind of thing. Because I mean, people have studied various
different mattresses.
And sometimes, some of us haven't worked as hard as we should have,
or could have, didn't really realize what we should, how we
should have been learning. So then
when we go out into the real world, and then the questions
start
coming, then it gets difficult. Like, I may have focused too much
on my now on my grammar. But when I go out, I'm getting Hadith
questions, and I probably didn't focus too much on Hadith, whereas
they should have. So there could be many, many reasons for this,
right? So at the end of the day, mashallah, the point is that
there's it's never too late, right? However old somebody is
they can always learn.
So what I'm going to do, what I'm going to do now is we're just
going to go through the various courses and just give you an
update about those courses, right, because most of you would have
already known already know about the courses that were already run,
we're just going to deal with those courses first.
So first, if we start off with the Iftar course Hamdulillah, I would
say that the if the student says some of you are here, how many on
average? How many questions on average, would you have? Would you
say you've done during the year?
There's about 650 questions, which is an immense amount of question
that that average is about probably about four to five
questions a day, I would say. Right, because although we are
doing more of it than in the beginning, we may have been doing
less than that. So probably about four to six questions that need to
be that requires a lot of research. And if not, I think you
can read lots of books. But what I've seen
That's beneficial is that you actually practice the questions
because that as the Mufti is what you're going to be doing outside.
You may be then told to go and teach hidayah. And generally, it's
the movies that are given hidayah to teach in a madrasah. Right?
Generally speaking, especially high authority, or whatever the
case is. So that's just the side aspect of it, to be honest, I
think,
because the reason why they probably given who they are, and
so on is probably because they've developed a keen jurists juridical
insight, how to break things down in a juridical manner. Because
when you have a case, the best way to figure out what the how to
answer it, is to break it down into its juridical components that
are that are
related to jurisprudence, and then to legislate, and try to
understand the hokum of each one. Otherwise, if you look at it in a
wholesome manner in as a whole in a monolithic way, then you could
have a wrong response. So sometimes there's only one small
issue that's
critical in that. So aside from that, really what you're going to
be doing outside is people are going to be constantly coming to
you, emailing you calling you and saying, what's the answer is,
what's the answer to that? And they want answers. So obviously,
in one year, even if you've done 1000 questions, it's not enough.
And even if you do 2000 questions in two years, it's not enough
because that won't cover all the questions that you will be asked
outside. But it will give you a good understanding of how to deal
with those questions and how to go and research it. And if you've
done about 1500 to 2000 questions in two years, then inshallah you
will, especially when we're doing most of the common questions, by
the time you leave, by the time you finish, you would have
you'd basically be able to deal with at least half of the
questions directly, immediately, because those will have been
covered, and then then the rest of them.
So Hamdulillah, that saves time. So basically, just for next year,
what we're doing is the first year we covered a book on a soul fake,
we covered a book, we covered part of the ashba ashba Nava on the
cover, we covered the book on Soul fit masala Lulu in Minnesota,
which I thought was very good for even understanding contemporary
themes in jurisprudence, and that was actually done by the
jurisprudence people as well.
Along with that, we've done our Soudal if and the shorter you
could receive will move the etc. Next year Inshallah, we're just
going to focus on more advanced books and earlier books on also
rific on Sorrell, if the. So we're going to try to understand what
sort of lift up from a Shafi perspective, from a Maliki
perspective, just to give us an understanding, because we are
living amongst other motherhood, we're not in a just homogenous
month hub environment, living in London or any other city
primarily. I mean, you're you're dealing with many Muslims around
you. Right? So it's important to know that, and I would say that
there's probably not going to be many differences in the adverb of
Iftar, among them anyway. And then the later also, the earlier
schoolbooks where the school is generally taken from the School of
Business away and surrogacy. And though, so we're going to be
looking at that, and then we're also inshallah going to be looking
at some of the more modern approaches to FIQ, minority Fick,
right?
Sinner aktuell, fatawa.
In contemporary times, basically formulating fatawa, and
contemporary times in the contemporary challenges, whether
we agree with something or not, that's we can't, we don't want to
dismiss things just because we don't, we don't like the person
who said it, or they may not be from our manager, or whatever the
case is, we we want to actually be able to go through that and
critically assess these things and find what's useful. And then, if
we disagree with something, or we disagree with it, but at least we
can take the useful. And it's very important for Muslims to be ahead
of that challenge. And that's why those things inshallah will be
covered along with a specialization. So this is the
year of specialization, because this is the students will be
entering the second year. So it's the time of specialization where
we've got the eight areas in which they'll be picking at least one of
those areas. And then thirdly, inshallah working on then
providing a thesis producing a thesis on that. But what we do
have is that initially, we thought that we're only going to run the
Iftar course every two years. So let it run its full two year
course and then start a new batch. But we're trialing something this
year, which may or may come as good news for some of you, because
many of you have contacted contacted us during the year that
they want to join the FDIC last in the coming year from September.
And we were just saying to everybody, no, there's going to be
no effect of course until 2019, which is next year, but we've
decided that we may be able to try this and make this work. So we're
trying to look for some really outstanding students who feel that
they've got the key
ability to join the FDIC class in their second year, right meaning
the current FDIC was a second year. And we'll give them some
preliminary material to help them. Because
I don't think it should be too difficult for those who are quite
motivated and quite academically adept in sha Allah so that they
can do the second year as their first year
as the as as the first year of the course. And then they can do the
second year, which will be the first year material again the year
afterwards. So inshallah I'm hoping that works, we've at least
got
at least got two students Inshallah, for that, well, we can
probably take one or two more maybe, right. So if that's if
you're interested, then this is probably the time to put your
application in for that. Inshallah.
If we move on to the jurisprudence course,
I'm going to wait, I'm going to invite mana Zhi Shan, who has been
one of our jurisprudence teachers to give us a kind of an overall
understanding of his interaction with the students because he was
one of the main teachers of the jurisprudence course as well.
But just to give you a quick roundup from my side,
maybe we had slightly over promised on the lubob. Last year,
we expected that we may be able to cover the whole of lubob.
Even covering the whole of Kaduri is difficult in a madrasah. And we
were there trying to be extremely ambitious, of trying to cover the
commentary of Kaduri lubob
In one year, and that obviously didn't happen. But
it wasn't because the teachers didn't work hard. The teachers
were working, working very hard to try to complete it. But it just
wasn't physically possible to do so in the time that we had.
Even if we had missed out to a bar that
what we actually discovered is that there are numerous students
that came in. And some of them had not even gone beyond. Some few had
not even gone beyond a bar that in some cases, it was the first time
that they were actually dealing with NECA and boo you and her do
that cetera, that they'd never gone beyond the Ibadat section.
Some had done Eva, that and a bit of Nika and Pollock, but hardly
any of you. So it was, I mean, I'm sure the students will probably
agree that it was definitely very beneficial. Because it was done in
a very critical way, very contemporary way to try to
understand the contemporary muscle as you're eating as you're reading
Kitab Nica and as you're reading Kitabi yourself hamdullah we did,
we did the whole of Kitab booboo, we covered the Ibadat again, some
in brief and some in detail. And we also covered Kitab Nica,
Pollock etc, and several other chapters as well.
The I'm gonna let monetization, talk about the other aspect of
this.
So what we now have for next year is that we're going to be running
that course again. But now Inshallah, we can most likely let
you know exactly how much we think we can cover this year, because
we've had an experience now one year, so we can actually tell you
that we are not going to cover the whole above, but these are the
chapters that we will cover, inshallah. So at least we can do
that. That's what that's what we understand from the inshallah it's
been a reminder of him, leaving him either or slowly, we'll get
him back.
So just to talk about what our aims and objectives were in this
advanced jurisprudence course, it's already highlighted most of
what I was going to say anyway.
So the idea of white thread was is a post grad, always focusing on
postgraduate students. So
initially, we thought of doing a refresher course, which was still
it was still something maybe in the pipeline, but then it became
morphed into what we have now, which was jurisprudence course.
So the idea was that you cover what you've covered, or you
refresh your knowledge of field, which you done in Madras already
to refresh that knowledge. And then you you have more. And the
idea of my lesson was to provide three things for the students. One
was
a history of the Hanafi madhhab, which is beyond just the biography
of the Imams, so So just remember Halifa has a shape anymore we use
of was beyond that. So how fit was like from before nominee for the
idea of Kufa, how that plays a role into the development of the
mud hub, and then moving down for the first freeform ridges.
The second
aspect that we will focus in on was the learning method. The idea
here is that there's multiple benefits to this. The most clear
benefit is that you learn the details as you might have. So it
was a conflict
In your mothership. So
the idea was that we get 20 to 30, if not more controversial issues,
not necessarily controversial in contemporary times, because
there's Messiah in that are not controversial now, but we're
controversies before. So it's about looking at as classical
issues which the Hanafi madhhab was attacked for, and to see
responses, and how the Hanafi madhhab responded to that. But the
benefit, meaning equals, it could be an easy task for me, which was,
I could just get one contemporary book of Hanafy, the leaves and do
that, but the idea was that we use multiple texts. So we start from
books from right from the beginning. So Mohammed Aman has
actually been is a hijab, Medina, and Komodo dentals Ella soon. So
the idea is that the student at the end of the course, not only
does do they have these arguments or confidence in the mud hub, but
they also have access or exposure to multiple texts. So if in the
future, something like this comes up, they know where to go. So
multiple texts were consulted for that. And the third
aspect they would uncover was contemporary field. So different
the difference here with the Iftar course, was that in the Iftar,
course, the students are given questions. So you're given
questions, you're supposed to go ahead and then find the answer, do
the research yourself. But here, it's
me or the book, we're looking at providing the answers. So it's
looking at this as contemporary issues. And these are the answers
given. And within that, meaning between the added deleted might
have been contemporary hip, where there was highly controversial
issues, which may be a simple photo doesn't. So So when we
looked at different books on those topics, so like something like
photography, we looked at specific books, or lengthy articles for pro
and against, so because the students were talking about with
this
argument arguments, so it's hard being exposed to arguments for
what you can believe in and against what you believe in. So
it's the whole idea of exposure, mainly. So that's the three things
that
I was covering in our lesson, and the other was lubob, two lessons,
and one was on the flip the moves, every token spoke about historical
soul. And that's the whole structure of the advanced
jurisprudence program. So the underlining goal, or my aim for
what I was trying to get at is that things like history, things
like the Latin madhhab,
contemporary are these kind of topics, they can't be taught in a
simple book, in terms of being dictated, so you kind of sit there
and open a book up and begins the end, and you learn history, right?
Or these are controversial issues. Here's one book which covers
everything, it doesn't work like that notice real life work like
that. So it's about giving the students a page to research. And
the biggest struggle that a student finds when they graduate
from other asserts, is that jump into a either a university or an
Iftar. Because the roles change, because for seven, six or seven
years, to become the top student in the model, this is whoever
could best as bad word but regurgitate what's been said in
class. So have a good you can copy or memorize what's been said in
class and repeat it in exam, your top student struggling again, if
you're going to university, it's the burdens upon yourself. Now,
you also speed in reading your story providing the research. So
the advanced jurisprudence course that we've presented, emerges that
two together, so not only are you still getting your lubob, so you
get your your classical training or how you do mothers. But with
that, you get exposure. So Paul, what I would do was not just
teach, but it was giving reading. So every week reading was given
books were given. So the some books are three 400 pages long. So
you're an expert to read the whole thing, but you still introduction
to it, you read a conclusion, read a chapter. So then in the future,
let's say 10, some 1015 20 years down the line, something comes up.
I remember there's a book there. Right. So that's the whole idea of
it, in terms of how the students reacted, then, in terms of
research is three points I was jotting down right now was needed
to be able to do research. One is there's a basic competency, when
you can't,
I can't carry out research in the field of physics, because I don't
have the basic competency for that. So there has to be some
basic knowledge. Prior before you want to carry out some sort of
research. Second is to have knowledge of previous research. So
what's been already done beforehand, which you can call a
literature review, because you don't want to take up a task, when
it's already been done beforehand. Usually, you will refer to the
previous relationship. And thirdly, because once you do
literally review this recently on every topic, right, but then you
have to have knowledge of authority. Do you know who are the
authorities in the field or who are not? So if you hear someone's
name saying data and research on this topic, you should have
knowledge of what ranking they are and are they competent or not to
do that and afford books, obviously, right? So books, so
I found that the students that had most of them were had the best
competency.
They did really flourish for us. So the way I examined them was not
a simple example as a coursework. So they had an assignment to do
half year, which was a review. So again, it's in the middle. So
you're given something, but then you have to provide your own
insights on an article,
you're given a choice in Arabic or English article, or academic
pieces. And then the end of year was a original piece that you also
write. And so from what I've seen so far, it does seem that the
students did very much enjoying us, obviously, the best people to
ask for this, but they didn't seem to engage. And you can see from
the beginning of the year to this year,
the questions they're asking, because the best way, you know how
students doing is the questions they ask. And secondly, the works
that they're referring to, with their writing. So, in essence, I
would say that, from what we set out to do, again, the best people
to ask me the students to see if they succeeded, but from from what
I've experienced from the students, I would say that it was
a was a healthy environment, and environment for development and
progress. Another thing about the jurisprudence class, is that we
actually had two students who had not finished.
They weren't graduates yet. One was actually only in the third
year. And the other one was in the fifth year, I think, fifth year,
basically, the penultimate year, the McCarthy, let's call it that,
right, so one student was in the Miche Katya and the other student
was only in the third year, but they took the whole jurisprudence
course, and they didn't lag behind they, you know, they got good
marks. And the benefit of that particular for at least one
student I know is that it gave them a huge it was like a rocket
boost for fic. Because the Fikile do here.
While it's targeted at anybody, primarily postgraduates, but any
smart student who really wants to study, so if you're doing Arlynn
calls in the evening, for example, or even in the morning, so if
you're doing in the evening, then you can actually join this live in
the daytime, because it's three days a week, four hours a day. And
even if you're doing it you're Alim course in the daytime, but
you've got time in the evening and you really want to boost your fic
because believe me flick is one of the most especially if you've got
an idea to be a Mufti in the future, then this will really give
you that boost. So
aside from the Iftar course all the other courses are not
restricted just to Oliver there is to restricted to anybody who will
be able to
deal with the issue and wants to
enhance themselves.
So even if you're doing it in the morning, a morning and you can't
attend live you that we had numerous students that were
listening to the recordings because they were in another
country, although mashallah we had one student, Allah reward him.
He was from the east from New York. And he used to be pretty
much regular for most of the days, from half eight in the morning,
which is about half three or half for depending on timing, depending
on time of the year, so he was always that half full, or half,
three, whatever it was before he goes to work during this four
hours of jurisprudence before he goes to work. So if it can be done
for him, then those of you who are just teaching mucked up, right,
actually, that's another dichotomy here. A lot of people the excuse
they make is that they can't take it because in the daytime they're
doing that they're working in the evening they're doing mock them.
Now to be honest, I mean, you Inshallah, you will be teaching
mock who accepts your teaching. But if you have to take time off
to enhance yourself, and to equip yourself and take a year off your
mclubbe. Right, then I don't think that's a very bad idea at all.
Because I think while it may, it may be that this just seems like a
new tradition, that once you're fighting, our tradition has been
not tradition that's been laid down by the forbearers. They've
always encouraged because if you go to download the Obon, there are
numerous Kamille programs, they call them, same thing you know,
what we have here, postgraduate brand, they call them tech millet
programs, completion programs, enhancement programs, they have
numerous ones. It's just the endorsement deal when you have to
have done the door are there so even if you're fighting somewhere
else, you don't have to go and do Dora there, the whole body again,
and then you'll be able to attend them, right if you want to be
officially in attendance, so that's why don't feel that this is
just for orlimar whatever it can be done online. And mashallah,
there were a number of students who actually used to listen
online, they were they were mothers, Ali Moss, who, you know,
had children teaching as well. And they were, of course they have to
try to play catch up all the time. And mashallah, I think the
jurisprudence The good thing about the jurisprudence program, right,
because used to provide them so much additional reading material
and give them exposure to so many different books. I think the the
forum the Google forum was really, really lively on that one.
Right. So even those who've probably never set foot in the UK,
or maybe even in, or in this place, or even in the UK, for that
matter from other countries, they felt like they were probably in
class because of the interaction that was going on. So
now we'll move on to speaking about the tafsir course, which
we're launching next year. So let's start talking about the
tafsir course that we have proposed, this one is going to be
over two days, it's going to be a Thursday, Friday program, right
Thursday, Friday program, about eight to nine hours over those two
days. So one day will be three and three to four hours, the other day
is going to be three hours. And
what we're going to cover in this, I have not seen another tafsir
course out there, and it's actually something that is a lot
in demand, because
they've seen is something that is just so mainstream, it's something
that everybody can have access to.
And it's something that everybody should have access to, when we say
Tafseer, because I don't want to reduce this to just talking about
the first seed, it's actually a Quran, Quran and tafsir course,
it's related to everything about the Quran, both understanding the
meaning of the Quran, and that have said that Tafseer is
essentially just a utility and a tool to understand the Quran. So
there's numerous other subjects related to the Quran that we're
going to try to deal with. So again, the proposal here is to
spend about two hours a week out of those two days, dealing with
probably between, I would say, maybe 20, to 30 taxis we're going
to cover during the year. So we're going to start from the earliest
of Sears, first study, the Manage, there's numerous books that have
been written on the methodologies,
and the style and
their focus of the various different amorphous serien, all
the way starting from if you start in our bus, or go down to the
first compiled one is probably the one that's published everybody has
is poverty. And you go down and have no cathedra. And you have
Lucy and you have quarter to B and you have tough sell cars in and
you have numerous ones, and then you've got the modern ones. So the
whole idea is to first study, what's the unique features and the
style of this morphism. And then after that, to take selected
passages of that FC, because you're not going to be on to the
host of C, but to take a Surah or a cluster of verses, and then
actually read that tafsir and then look at his style. So for example,
if it's zero raazi, then we're probably going to take a selection
on Aqeedah on theology, because that's what he's really good at.
Right? Got it to be mashallah he you know, we'll have to see what a
representative sample of that is because he sometimes under just
one, one or two verses, he'll have about 20 Different a birth on
various different subjects, and then Lucy and so on. So that's
going to be kind of very interesting, because you'll get a
good coverage and a scope and a review of at least the main def
series and some of the more obscure def series so that in the
future when you want to study a verse, or you want to teach a
lesson on tafsir, or give a dose of Quran in the masjid, you'll
know exactly which tafsir to go to, because you would have dealt
with them, you'd never think that hey, these tough seas, man, you
know, they're beyond me. So he's just trying to equip
us to get into reading various different facets.
The second
another hour will be a critical assessment of modern FRC. Because
to be honest, there's been what people would say Inhofe fit the
first year in contemporary times, in the most recent times, there's
been a lot of inherit of Intersil. So a lot of the modern def series,
they're not based on they're not placed based on the classical
literature. These were a lot of more double the double Quran just
contemporary understand, in fact, what One assessment shows is that
a number of the series that have been written recently there, they
were not necessarily even written by scholars, people who had a
background in Hadith and, and Aqeedah and these were people who
are good thinkers, good Arabist right, a debes maybe, you know,
literature scholars, right? thinkers, philosophers, even and
then they because the the Quran is open to all they, they they
produce the tafsir some have done some have probably produced some
really, you know, some good points in there. But then this is also
because the it's not necessarily backed by full Aqeedah
understanding or re academic understanding of aqidah and, and
Hadith and so on. Sometimes, you know, they they could fall into
what you would call deviation from the manage that has been
understood. So, critical assessment of modern deficits.
Then the next another topic that's going to be covered in there is
is the whole concept of Bulava and edges or Quran
and thermal Quran so Jazel Quran the style language and structure
of the Quran. That's an amazing I mean, I remember when I did that,
so as to progress Abdel Halim that that was just amazing, just gives
you this new dimension to look at the Quran from it's quite, quite
amazing.
Then there's the Western criticism of the Quran, you know, from over
100 200 years ago until contemporary times, you know,
numerous Orientalist have have criticized the Quran on various
different themes in the Quran, various different ways. So it's
trying to understand what they've written, and how do we respond to
that? Because if you're a scholar, you're going to you're going to
receive questions about various different criticism because these
criticisms when they come out, then they proliferate. And people
pick them up. And even if you think that they've all been dealt
with, like, on Earth somewhere and they'll come back to haunt you. So
fahan will Quran Western criticism of the Quran responses to that
language, style and structure, ages Bulava critical assessment of
modern tafazzin and tafsir selections itself. And Rulu Quran
sarilumab Quran will be studied from various different books. And
again, we're not going to study just one book idea is that
monetization he will be providing various different
I'm going to let him speak a bit more about that anyway. Right. So
the only thing that's left is
Quran
just a brief point before because some people were calling this
course not, we didn't save the secret, the hustles
fit of zero, meaning the hustle requires the student to actually
have studied the topic at a reasonable level, they did the
hustle. So we're going to be starting right from the beginning
and going quite deep because it bothers most mothers as if
there'll be exemptions. I'm sure they are in some of this. But the
the level that's to be studied that is in a liberal Quran. If
you're lucky, you may get a closer look of it.
In terms of the FSI, if anything, you have Quran translation, and
then you have jelly, jelly is, you know, it's like an Arabic
translation in Arabic. So you want to have much in terms of
diversity. So beyond that, to say, I'll be going to the hostels, it
wouldn't really make sense, right. So that's an important
clarification.
But that was it. That being said, a local Quran.
The idea is we're still it's still developing the course as it goes
on. So we'll see how this course goes. And then we will make
amendments depending on
what's not been done before. So we don't have a blueprint that we're
following. So the idea of animal Quran is to have one base text,
which is quite inclusively covers the main topics and then in
certain chapters to deviate from the texts or to go into the more
classical work. So for example, the base text that we have right
now we're looking at is Chef Abdullah dates, Abu Kadima to
associate your normal Quran, which is a large book, but five to 20
pages, but it's quite basic in terms of Arabic is structure and
the way it discusses things is quite, quite simplistic. Wait, so
the idea will be read as base text, but then as chapters come,
so you didn't ask Mutsu are you doing, for example, you discussing
Iraq, you can move into the discussion of co2 because it
causes you to have multiple views. But then when you do it on co2,
let's say on the issue of there's so much written in the it's
difficult to try to even work out what's correct, what is it because
he literally does jump over everything. So then the idea is
that the teacher is teaching the book. And the students work on the
idea of how I structure my lessons here, because advice is not be
seen as a teacher coming here and telling you what's right or wrong
or dictated to you is because everyone's qualified is forced to
sit together and then go through texts together. So everyone has an
import an idea and I have my viewed idea. And then we try to
develop our views together rather than me being an expert. And
coming in tell you what's what so that's the basic idea. And then
from there certain topics are going to be
taken out so one that was response to the mystery. Now one of the
major
critiques of the Quran by the orientalist is on origins, right
so much submission before on
the idea of sidebars. So people are questioning Buhari not not
talking about question your book is in process at them. The
question is asked to Imam Bukhari, right? And where does this
question it comes from is the idea of old transmission, manuscripts
plus courts, right having emerged from sources and health knowledge
is transmitted is such an important part of our knowledge
and such an important aspect of knowledge it is, which we don't
have a separate lesson for, right that we learn this so is this the
whole idea is to pick out those topics which are not covered. And
then we try our best here to try to cover that and provide sources
for students to read and to take on for later. So that's the basic
idea. So if we move over
inshallah to our theology program.
We had, I think we had about just less than 30 students 27 or
something students in that, again, there were probably less that used
to come on site than those who used to mashallah very diligently.
There's a number of students who
were on track that listen to the entire
program, over the course of, you know, the eight or nine months
that we were doing it. Now the theology program was split into
two, which I detail last year, which we detail as it is, it's
actually two aspects to it. So half of it, the full theology
program, which was nine hours, this year, it's going to be two
and a half times three, which means seven and a half hours,
approximately last year, it was actually 369 hours. So Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday evenings.
So what we had in here is that half of it dealt with the
classical sources. So we dealt with, we took two texts, one was
sherlocky, that at the house of Madani and Hamdulillah that was
covered. So you got the math to really understanding then we took
the shuttle hurry the elbow here, and that was quite interesting
text, because initially it starts off as being very terse, very
refined, very particular, the Arabic is very challenging, and
then after it becomes very, very easy after about 20% of the book,
but it gives you an understanding of the shady side of things, when
you have the two together, you It complements each other because the
order is not the same. So when you studied the ciphers in here, then
you get to refine them in the in the other text. And then another
discussion would come before in the other Texan you then taken in
the herida. Then after that, once the sherlocky that the habia of
Madani was completed then we started looking at Coronavirus
commentary. So we did several selections of that we weren't able
to cover the whole commentary because that wasn't intended
either. So that was the Arabic part of it. The other aspect of it
is where primarily started Imran and Dr. Sephora, they dealt with
that. And I'm going to leave it to start Imran to explain what we did
last year in in overall, and what we're going to how we're going to
maybe adjust that for next year. But that was a very, very
ambitious program. And the reason for it is that we covered several
different things in there starting from you can say Plato and
Aristotle because a lot of the we live in the West, much of the
Western philosophy, Western understanding of the world, about
life, about the brain about
about the heart, if I mean I don't think that's a big discussion, the
heart but about the hereafter whether there is a hereafter, a
lot of that is comes primarily through Aristotle and Plato and it
goes on it filters, changes, adjusts, gets replaced, grits
critique critiqued, so the major thinkers that we dealt with, I
mean, what this course gave me I mean, because I was listening,
when I was in teaching the other part of it, I was listening. One
of the greatest benefits of this is that you then begin to
understand what feminism is actually all about.
Where does the whole issue about religion and science? Where does
it converge? And where does it go wrong? Right? Where does, for
example, a lot of the lot of what you read in the media, and a lot
of the onslaught against Islam, a lot of the postmodernist ideas,
right, that are basically based in founded in existentialism, and
hermeneutics the way they look at texts, and so on. It just gives
you an understanding for any of them, really, this understanding
is so important, because this is the kind of thought process the
mentality the the ideas that we're dealing with on a day to day
basis. And we just get caught up in that. And we don't know how to
respond because we don't know where it's coming from on what
foundations is it based when you understand you can immediately
tell that okay, this is coming from an empirical perspective.
This is coming from an existential issue. Now, the that was mashallah
diligently taught and the amount of hours and subjects that were
covered in the one of the hour, you can say, our supporters,
right, well, I mentioned him earlier, we actually took the
course as well, is Prince Razi, who is a philosophy in his own
right, because he studied all of Plato's books. He's actually got
two PhDs on filosofi philosophies, subjects. He took the whole course
and I was surprised that he he was on it was always on time. He
didn't lag behind too much. Within two weeks, it would have you know,
you would never have more than probably two or three lessons
outstanding.
He was on the ball. And we wanted to change the course, like he
says, No, you're not going to change the course, this is
probably the most unique course that you have. And it basically is
so unique. He reckons that nobody else no other university, forget
Islamic University, none us Muslim University is not even providing
the scope that we're providing. Because we're dealing with lots of
stuff in there, right evolution, gender, fluidity, artificial
intelligence, there's just so much that's been dealt with in the,
that it's quite unique. So if somebody really wants to
understand, and I think anybody who's really wants to
become aware of how to deal with a lot of the common questions and
contemporary challenges, this course is very, very important, it
can sound a bit daunting, some aspects of it are done. But look,
if you don't understand the whole thing, that's fine, right, at
least you can take back a lot and get an understanding of where
things are coming from. So I'm gonna let him run. Unfortunately,
Dr. Subotic was supposed to be here, he was unable to come today,
he had to pull out the last yesterday. But to start him run,
he'll do his part. And, again, if you have any questions about these
things, we're going to take them later. Just
Just to elaborate and add to some of these upset in terms of the
cost structure we had, you know, we had
innumerable aims and objectives and sections to do. And hamdullah.
We, we managed to do a lot of them, but we weren't able to do
many of them, simply due to the fact that we ran out of time in
some areas, but because we covered topics in a lot of detail, it is
time ran out as such, but I try numerate in terms of what we
actually did and in terms of what topics inshallah we're gonna carry
on with. So areas that we explored, were arguments for God.
So we looked at the cosmological argument, the ontological
argument, the design argument, we look at the whole notion of the
concept of God. So what does it mean the word God, what is the
concept behind that? How do we equate? Or how do we resolve the
issue of omnipotence, God's power, with reference to, for example,
paradoxes? Can God create a stone that He cannot lift himself?
You've heard of that part of 70? Or, for example, how do we
reconcile the issue of, you know, gods in God's knowledge, with the
issue of freewill, and so on and so forth. So, we looked at the
arguments for God's existence, we looked at arguments against God's
existence. So you know, atheists have arguments against God's
existence, they give all these arguments, it is divine
hiddenness, if there is God, and God is all loving, how come? Most
people don't recognize God? Or they can't find God? Why is God
hidden in such a way? If there is God, and He is all powerful, and
all loving, then why is there evil? In the in the universe as
such? Right? Why is it so much event so so so we looked at
arguments for we looked at outcomes against, and the benefit
of looking at those particular areas and those themes was
primarily effect into multi subs theology section, because in the
field, you text that you look at arguments for God's existence, you
look at God's attributes and so forth. And we looked at this in
terms of a broader sense from, you know, from a theological
perspective, so much of those discussions about God's existence,
the concept, the attributes, a lot of this stuff, if you go to
university, it will be, you know, a full module in terms of a BA or
an MA course, but we we started with that, in order to provide a
foundation for multisoft course. And then subsequently, after that,
we went to other areas related to science and religion. We looked at
the whole issue of philosophy of science, what is science? looked
at the whole issue of methodology of science, induction deduction,
we looked at all these are paradoxes. Then we looked at in
terms of case studies. Okay, so what's the reconciliation of
religion and science? What are the different paradigms? I know
everyone's probably heard of Richard Dawkins in this room, and
our home and we know Richard Dawkins is a very famous proponent
of the position that science and religion are in conflict. They
call it the warfare paradigm. But there are other patterns as well
as even karma typically mean, they had an integrationist paradigm
with science and religion. So we explore different patterns of in
terms of science and how can understand science and religion.
We looked at case studies, we looked at evolution, a lot of
detail Subhanallah, we got about at least nine hours on just
evolution in terms of exploring what evolution was intelligent
design, looking at it from, you know, the issue of problems within
it within the evidences. So we had two guest speakers with regards to
who said Madonna, you know, with mon Ali who basically is doing
loads of YouTube videos on YouTube. He actually did about six
hours and then we had Mufti Samudra man who came in and did,
you know a whole theological rejoinder. So we, we put a lot of
emphasis in terms of those areas. We looked at quantum mechanics.
And then after that, we looked at some areas which you don't
necessarily really explore much at university, areas of sociology. So
how does sociology interact? How does psychology and religion
interact? So everyone's probably heard of, you know, Freud, and
everyone's probably heard of, you know, some of his psychological
psychoanalysis theory, but it has a massive bearing on religion.
People don't appreciate that much of the modern realm is based on
Freud's understanding of religion as being a trauma. Yeah as being a
suffering that human beings go through lucky
neuroses are an illusion, we looked at the whole issue of
politics. As we looked at Karl Marx, we looked at the issue of
ethics. So the utilitarian principles, and so on and so
forth. So I'm chuckling a lot of keywords here to you, but we
actually went through it very systematically over a period of at
least 30 Odd weeks, until we broke it down to different modules. So
what we've done this year, inshallah we're hoping to
modularize everything in a more succinct way. So that it provides
people the opportunity to come and do different types of modules,
like God's existence, God, concept, science, religion, the
issue of, you know, sociology and psychology. So, as multitap said,
What's the point of this? One is that we all have trouble heart and
the other day, I know many people who are all have, you know,
advanced degrees in Islamic studies. But there are always
going to be doubts until today. And this is part of the mind
anyway to have doubts. So it's for personal satisfaction in terms of
being able to provide a rational answer to yourself to the best
that you can do. And we know in our tradition, not all answers are
rational. Sometimes we leave it to the realms of the gap where we
don't know. But not all questions are lifted again. So God's
existence is not question that is, well Hamdulillah. We leave it to
Allah, I believe in Allah because Allah said, so it's just how our
scholars argue this,
find maybe some questions about God's attributes or questions of
the gap. But there are many questions that we can give
evidence for. So one is personal satisfaction, personal
satisfaction of the beliefs that we hold, that actually I forgot to
mention, we actually had this whole section on Islam as well, in
terms of, you know, looking at miracles, why is the miracle of
Islam? Why is Islam true and not Christianity, or, for example,
Judaism, and starts a fruit who's an expert in terms of, you know,
Arabic Bulava. He went through the whole issue of the Arabic language
looked into the issue of you know, the, the Quranic miracle, the
linguistic miracle miracle that, that aspect, I think, was the
subset you are going to touch on at the field course. That's
something that's not discussed very often, you get discussions of
Quran and science, Quran and in terms of, you know, prophecies are
very rarely do you get the Quranic miracle as Allah has articulated
himself, which is the linguistic miracle, Allah is challenged,
doesn't it? And we talked about that as well in terms of those
miracle aspects. So personal satisfaction is one issue. But
then obviously, as all Lama, as you know, you know, movies and so
on and so forth. People come, obviously, you know, people are in
charge of flux and communities, and there are people who are going
to come and they want solutions and answers. And if they can't
find solution and answer from the Allama, then ended the day, it
somehow brings Shabbat into them in terms of the whole religion,
because an alum animosity is a representation of the religion
that's where he is, or she is, they can't provide a cogent answer
then that somehow and this is incorrect, it's fallacious
fallacious reasoning, by somehow, you know, for that individuals
asked that question, not what the answer, it really breaks down that
religion. You think yourself this religion has no answers if this is
what these people have. So it's to provide our community who are
suffering now. So many people out there have some issue with not so
many Shabbat, they have so many doubts. There's so many issues
only yesterday, I was watching a video about transgenderism and so
on and so forth. How do we deal with that in terms of Islam,
gender fluidity, most schools are now going to be happening. You
know how having unisex toilets was the standard perspective on that.
How do you irrational Arthur Robinson? In a blasphemy, Allah
Allahu Akbar, or something's, you know, silly that is equated to
Islam? How do we get a rational cogent answer which Islam gives?
So Hamdulillah, those are kind of areas, we discuss some of the
monocular the terminology can be difficult, but Hamdulillah this is
something that we're going to be working on this year to make sure
that we start at a very basic level build you up.
We have Google classroom as well, in terms of the FFC program, we
had loads of stuff on that will start stuff Brooke was answering
lots of questions. So we have love interaction as well in terms of
those issues. So you're not basically coming to lecture them,
you're left to your own devices. There's a lot of interaction terms
of if you want to know answers you want explore things further,
there's a lot of resources we provide. So we did it last year,
it went okay, I would say we're trying to optimize it inshallah
make it better. But as much as I'd say it's very useful course in
those issues in terms of personal as well as data purposes in terms
of positive data, where we can possibly go out and give dower and
negative data in terms of negating those things about the religion of
Islam, those kind of controversial things also have to be things that
are unnecessarily, you know, not always dealt with or just not
Bucha. But yeah, later, you know, that's, and that's sometimes the
only the right lever sometimes, yeah, but not everything can be
left, sometimes. There are many things that shouldn't be left, and
if they're left, and they cause major doubts, so a passive
activities abishola Just like we're not here for that. So the
the half which is related to more the philosophical aspects, and not
not the classical Arabic text, but what was starting runs on that.
That was also you could just take that separately, which is called a
faith foundation. That's what it was called the faith foundations
course. And again, we're going to make it into modules. So if you
can't take the whole course for the whole year, you could take one
module, the science module or the the theology module, you know,
it'll be it'll be on the site very soon if you don't want to take the
whole course.
I just want to mention, I mean, what will start Imran mentioned he
mentioned
In the number of names, you know whether that be Karl Marx Popper,
Freud, Kant, right? These are the Western prophets, basically. I
mean, Europe hasn't had a profit, right? I don't think there's any
profit. I mean,
there's no profit that was sent to Europe, God knows best Allah knows
best, really, but there's no history of them. So they've
imported Jesus peace be upon him.
And then there's the Judeo, and then there's the Muslims have come
in. But
in terms of the so called modern prophets, right, in that sense,
then you've got these famous thinkers. Now, the average person
on the streets, or the the person who's writing the article, or the
person who's giving the interview, was critiquing Islam, or, or
trying to push a certain
agenda or a certain idea of feminism or whatever, they're
never going to say that this is a feminist idea, or that this is
empiricism, or this is science, oh, well, science in my use, but,
or they may never call it
hermeneutics or whatever, these, they may never even have to quote
Freud, or Kant, or Marx, or anybody else, you know, if it's an
issue of sociology, they will just provide the idea. It's actually
it's ingrained, right, it's, it's like the way Muslims will speak
about Islamic issues, without necessarily quoting, because it's
so common, it's become common nomenclature, right, it's become
common terminology, common ideas. So they won't even know that this
actually comes from Freud, or that this comes from Kant, or this is,
you know, an idea that's based in whether you call it
existentialism, or whatever the case is, but they this is what the
Western idea is based on. And if we don't know what it's based on,
then it's very difficult to try to attack it. Because what we're
doing here in this course, is you take the idea, and then we show
the criticisms against it, both from a Western perspective, and
from an Islamic perspective. And that's very interesting. All of
these ideas, they've actually been critiqued by Westerners
themselves, right? Other scientists, I mean, other
thinkers. So we're showing how they're critiqued. And then we
can, we can say, Okay, this is the maybe the Muslim where the Islamic
way of looking at it.
So don't get put off by the big names and the big ideas on all
that because we have to, we have to understand them, and then be
able to inshallah deal with what's going on outside.
I want to move on to the last course. Now, this last course, has
come from our experience over the last year with the other courses.
And what this was, is that remember, this was primarily
supposed to be a postgraduate Institute,
which means that you would have studied your Alima Alima course.
And now you're going to come and further yourself in one of these
areas. So if you feel it felt to me, we can jurisprudence, you will
do that theology, you will do that. Right. And you'll you'll do
more. I mean, you weren't expected to know all of these theology,
things that are mothers or mothers, I can never cover all of
these things, they can cover some of these things, right. But they
can't cover all of these things. That's just impossible. Right?
What we discovered is that we've had a number of students who a few
who are unable to get a grasp of the text. Because mashallah, we
had some students who had studied and graduated maybe 10 years ago,
right, eight years ago, maybe even more, right? Because we don't know
all of them when they graduated. But they become very rusty. Right?
So
Arabic the lubob, for example, the Zulu Fakebook, it was quite a
challenge, because when you've been, especially a language, when
you've neglected a language for a while, you're going to become
rusty in a language. I mean, a lot of people have done Spanish at
school or French at school, and Utah, tell him to speak French
right now. And they probably can't write even if they got an A, in
their GCSEs, for that matter. So the same thing happens if you
don't use the language, then you're going to lose it. So we
found that these students were finding it really tough to
understand the language of the book. Some of them may have been
more recent graduates, but maybe weren't able to work hard enough,
or whatever the case was.
So now we've launched another course, which were which is called
the SIBO. A course a SIBO. is obviously the famous Nahai, the
grim Merriam, right. So don't get put off by the Navy is just a nice
name. But really what it is, is an Arabic refresher course, what we
mean is we're not going to take you back to Honduras, or Miley was
sovereign gets you to memorize all the gardens, right? That's not the
idea of the course. Right? The idea is that it's going to start
off with a kind of an overview of the main rule rules of Navajo and
surf, which you need on a practical level to deal with
texts. Right? So think
That's Subak stuff.
We only want to do that for a few weeks at the beginning just to get
people into it. And those who know that very well, they can proceed
on to the text, then we're going to start with a series of texts.
This is only about six to seven hours a week, most likely it's
going to be on a Saturday or a Sunday, we're still trying to
decide because there's different people won't do it at different
times where I don't think we're going to be able to do this in the
weekdays anymore, because we don't have space here, we've got several
courses running at the same time. So we're not going to have space,
most likely this is going to be a weekend course. Right? So either
Saturday morning to early afternoon or Sunday morning early.
Often, the idea of this is that you will get your
overview and our answer, then we're going to put you on to the
text starting with things like nerf Hartlaub. And going on to
Mortara and other texts, we'll take selections of fixed texts, or
saltex, Hadith texts, eventually, so that you build up slowly, a lot
of the work you're going to have to do in terms of really trying to
you're going to be given work, you know, to work out for the whole
week, use a dictionary told how to use the dictionary lexicon. And
I've been compiling I've been because I've been teaching for the
last two years, or last several years, but I've been compiling a
list of what I think are the most common pitfalls in translating
from Arabic into English. The reason is that Arabic is a totally
different language, forget the fact that it's written right to
left and English is written left or right. That's the That's a
minimal problem. The bigger problem is the idioms, idioms, and
people will know that the mean by an ear doesn't exist in English.
And so many people get lost in min Barnea versus the simplest issue,
right?
There are people who still translate the world is still in
fear. In English, there is no well enough, you don't have to start
every sentence with the end and end. Right. But yet, when a lot of
people are translating, they're so literal, right? That every time
it's one Hola, we're this we're that. It's that's supposed to be a
silent Wow, really, because in English, it doesn't make sense at
all to just keep saying and, you know, your your English teacher
would probably cross that off the Why do you keep saying and for at
the beginning of a fresh sentence, the WoW in Arabic is just to show
you that this is a new sentence, you know, translated, every time
they come to afar, they say so, and it doesn't work in English,
because sometimes the font is used to represent something else. And I
don't want to bore you with all of the details. But I think
after, you know, testing a number of students and listening to them,
I think I figured out with a lot of the pitfalls are. So what we
want, what we're trying to do is to get them to do a very refined
translation. The reason is that in Arabic,
if you've got the word
Ha, Raja, and Harada, and istok, Raja, and Aqua Raja,
they it's all about either exiting or taking someone out, or evicting
someone, or wanting somebody to be evicted. But if
it says, it's stuck, Roger, then it means to want somebody to come
out. And a lot of students don't appreciate the colossal blob,
right, which are the special characteristics of the particular
verb form. There's a reason why the author is going to say, the
Harada as opposed to Harada because the Hora de is trying to
come out, there's a pretense aspect they are there's an effort,
because Bob, the first one is to show the Caliph. And I think this
is where a lot of students, what they do is they see it's hotter,
it means going out. So they just do a rough translation related to
going out. And
they get by, and that's not right. Arabic is such a refined text that
you almost feel like these people are doing a crime by not
understanding the nuance of that particular aspect. So I think I've
got about 10 to 15 particular pitfalls, which inshallah we're
going to try to go through and get people to master. So they avoid
these things. And then Inshallah, you'll see that it'll be smooth
sailing, right? We're going to try to get you to,
to think in Arabic. Because what's happening is that if you studied
enough to do then you will translate, you'll read the Arabic,
people read about it, they read the text, they don't understand
what they're reading, they read it first and hope they get it right.
And if the Arabs are written that then they'll probably get it
right. And if it's written wrong, they'll get it wrong. Then what
they'll do is they'll try to then translate it into order in their
mind, then from order they'll try to translate into English. And
I've seen students who have not studied Urdu they've studied
directly in English. They're just still reading the text first as
though it's sunk.
kind of
empty text, then they're trying to make sense of it. What we're
trying to do through this course, is to get you to read the text.
And think in Arabic, right? So as soon as you read it, you know what
it's talking about. And you know, if you don't know the meaning of
something, so you will go and check it up before you actually
move on to the next part. Oh, you will understand it from the
context. So I think this is what we're this is to empower a person
to really get the Arabic really understand it, because without
that, you're going to struggle in your Hadith, you're going to
struggle in your Aqeedah books, you're going to struggle Nala when
there are just some common themes, right? For example, in newly VA,
right, there's a term I remember from when we read in our first
year, right where you'll see ru WASC will now almost Starman and
be majority in society annual just study
this Moogerah word. I mean, if you look in the dictionary, like
denuded unclothed, what's that got to do with this here.
But the word Majora means just merely purely from just so that's
an idiom of the Arabic language. And that's what I tried to explain
to people.
Which is trying to convey the Arabic idioms. So for example, in
English, we say, Have you tried it out?
A person who's learning English afresh? He's going to look at
tried it out, okay? Try means to attempt, tried it out, like get
out? Exit? How does that make any sense, they're going to stumble
over out. The only the reason why we have no problem with this is
because this is how we think. So the idioms are part of our normal
understanding of language, right? Because we've mastered and when
you can't do that to Arabic the way they speak, for example, or
Jabba, I remember when I was in Syria,
you know, in English, we say, Do you like this? Do you like this?
Whereas in Arabic, they say, does that fascinate you?
Right? Well, you could say hello to a Buddha like but generally
they sell Jabbok. Right? Has that fascinated you? Like do you like
it? Right? As though that thing is doing all the all the work. So
that's just ways of understanding Arabic. And believe me, if you
just understand these small issues, you will be able to master
the Arabic language. So that's what we're trying to focus on in
this course, Inshallah, it's only about six, about six hours a week,
right? But, you know, in sha Allah that will give you that
confidence, and I hope Inshallah, so that's that's basically called
a SIBO a program, because Inshallah, after that, in a
forthcoming year, we in we then intend for those who really enjoy
the Arabic we intend to do an advance selections of Arabic
texts.
So for example, we're going to deal with the mahkamah Tell Heidi,
the separate remote Ellicott, the one hermosa the one with an A, B,
and
Muhammad Hariri sorry and
Mortara. Right, and really appreciate the literature, really
understand the Arabic and the nuances and why a certain word has
been used in a particular place. For a jurist that is so important,
because the the jurist of fucky, who's writing the reason is used
and chosen a certain word has a number of benefits. That's why
he's chosen that word and not something else. Because most of
our books they've been refined over the centuries. These are not
like first drafts that had been written arbitrarily, they've
actually been written, and then probably refined so much that we,
that's why you hardly see a mistake in them these days, right?
And then they've been commented on and so on, and so forth. So
anyway, I hope that gives you an understanding of what we're trying
to achieve by this. But this will be very useful for those people
who feel weak, but want to work hard in trying to develop the
Arabic language, because without a solid foundation Arabic language,
you'll struggle with all of the sources that are in Arabic
Hamdulillah. So
in order to finish off now, I just want to mention a final plea. Stop
wasting your time on WhatsApp, stop wasting your time on forums,
these debates will continue. But you can't defend against these
debates unless you equip yourself in a solid way. Right? If you're
just catching up on stuff where, okay, the new issue is this now,
so I go and learn I'm waiting for somebody to write a response I'll
learn about that. All you're going to be aware of is just basically
one side one side of the story and the issues themselves. The way to
really do this is to make firm your your foundations to go and
take a course in Judaism and take a course on on the theology take a
course on the Quran so that you can access the the main books
themselves
for our sisters, right? We really need you because we have mashallah
audiences, and
we've got so many Alima courses
But after they graduate, we, this is as relevant to you, in fact, if
not even more relevant, because to be honest, we just had recently
our controversial questions course, which is actually part of
the theology course. But we kept, we had about 170 or so people sign
up for that. And it was
369 times to 18 hours. So it's over two weeks, six days, three
hours each day. We don't I think we're at the end, we ended up
doing with about 50 or 60 questions, extremely controversial
questions. And I think some of the most controversial and animating
questions What about women,
but the whole women, you know, whether that relates to Hadith, or
whatever it relates to.
So for sisters, your work is cut out for you, for the animals
because people expect you to give answers. And to be honest, in a
number of these issues. If there's a man who's trying to tell the
Islamic viewpoint on an issue dealing with women.
It doesn't look good, right? Because they think you're just the
guy and then you got a beard as well, most likely, right? Then you
say that you have absolutely no idea, right?
It just doesn't go down. Well, we need women to deal with these
women issues, because that will make a difference. Because as soon
as a woman is dealing with it immediately can say okay, this is
not some man who hates women, or who subdues women or subjugates
women or presses women, because that's the charge that is out
there. So we need the women to take these things by the neck and
deal with them. That's a hit miss not just the hitmen. It's a
funnel, it's a necessity, that you must deal with this. Allah has
given you the knowledge for this reason that you've spent 567 years
whatever you spent, you need to continue to do that. Right. I know
all courses are not the same. All Alima courses, all Alim courses,
even all mothers are not the same. They have different degrees of
intensity and, and focus. So regardless of where you started,
I'm sure there's a place for you, right if you really want from
Allah subhanaw taala.
So I'm going to open it up inshallah to two questions. So
while you're formulating your questions, RFI is going to come
and just read you a few testimonials.
From them, there's a number of testimonials that we have
received. And these are mainly from the the advanced
jurisprudence course. And one just to start off with, it says
mashallah can only describe the teachers as gems. As much as up
and number of teachers that are involved in the course Marshall
lab put a lot of effort into devising the course itself.
Another testimony mentioned that the Institute Institute is built
around a developed level of study, instead mentioned the style of
teaching is very well adapted to the times we live in, in which
it's essential for any British Muslim seeking out Islam. Another
testimonial, just to mention is that the instructors have clearly
made a lot of effort in making the material relevant, teaching
Messiah from a contemporary point of view when needed. Now some of
these testimonials that I'm going to just point out a number of
things. And there's a reason why I'm mentioning these aspects of
the testimonials. Another testimonial mentioned is that the
course is an excellent refresher for those that have graduated, but
have lost touch with their studies.
And another one despite being an online student, this is very
important for those, you know, there's a lot of benefit of being
on site as well, but just for as a testimonial for those who are
online. It says that I have found that the course has helped me to
make the jump from simply sufficing the text I am studying
to regularly referring to other texts and resources to very verify
my understanding, and to gain more depth, both because of the
teachers and of the students
in regarding to the faith foundation course, dimension, that
genuinely white thread has opened doors for those who wish to pursue
further studies and are looking for guidance on how to make all
that that they have learned. Now, the reason why I mentioned a lot
of these aspects of the testimonials is you can see that
from white fit Institute there's an effort to to meet the content
relevant to today's pain, there's a lot of studying that will be
done in
the previous study and hence the postgraduate is dealing with the
issues of today and sub and we'll start Imran and other other
teachers on the courses have really made the effort to kind of
deal with the issues of today. And Hamdulillah. Just as much as I
haven't mentioned the number of courses that we have done in the
past year, as well as the the events that we have held. That
gives my income in holding these Dosia and inshallah with many
events to be taken to take place. You can see that in the short term
and Hamdulillah we have made the effort to make that step
but we're not short sighted, here, we have the long term vision, the
long term view that inshallah at that level, we are able to provide
more courses, but we are also able to provide good quality Alama into
the community. And with that comes with the effort of your, you know,
you to us, and the support that you give us and the push that you
provide us, you know, without your effort without your push without
your guidance, and we can't provide for the courses that we
want. But on top of that, I have to deal with the the most
important aspect, which is dealing with the finances of running this
institute Alhamdulillah we, we've done well for the first year. But
like I mentioned, we're not short sighted here, we're not in the
short term, we're here for the long term, and inshallah dalla, we
want to be in a position where we can kind of build from what we
have today. And to be to be able to provide more courses, to be
able to hold more events, you know, in larger space that we
have. Then, here, and with that, we have a PayPal, where it's a set
of direct debits. Now, we're only asking for small contributions for
the month in which you will contribute throughout the year,
which we'll be able to provide for, you know, the efforts that
will go into providing, you know, the better qualities in the space.
And that is available to us in short. And therefore, we are
asking everyone who has the ability here to kind of donate as
much as they can, on a monthly basis. And we've also got a link
online where people can go online to donate online as well. So we're
not doing a fundraiser we don't want I mean, of course, you can
give money if you want. But we're not asking you for money right
now, the whole idea is that if you can sign one of these direct debit
forms, because recently there was a property that became available,
it was extremely expensive. And initially, we even tried to go for
it. But then we realized that if we love it 2 million, right? And
we thought, if we're going to start looking for that kind of
money, then we our courses are going to suffer. So then we pulled
out. So now we're just trying to be a bit more proactive, that
I hate to ask for money, right? But I'm not asking for myself. The
idea of this is those who have the ability
and I've seen that, you know with any kind of donation you give
Allah subhanaw taala always repays you I mean, that's like you can
swear by that because Allah subhanaw taala says that in the
Quran himself. So even if it's five pound a month, you won't even
see it disappear from your account. And but it will have a
huge instead of I mean to be honest, your deposit your deposit
the money in your bank, then from there, it will go into a deposit
with Allah subhanaw taala that's basically what you'll be doing.
So, for me, a donation is just a deposit with Allah, that's what
you're doing really. I went to a masjid the other day on Friday
Hays masjid and they've got these guys collecting money outside. I
said, You're the bank. Basically, you're the Bank of Allah, because
your people are coming in depositing money for the sake of
the hereafter. Anyway, I'll take the questions now we've got the,
for the theology course, is there a basic primer
or text in English that you can recommend reading prior to the
course, as some of the topics or subjects you've never studied or
read about,
there is some kind of philosophy one on one or something that you
can suggest. Inshallah, if there are we can suggest a number of
books. So there are really decent, you know, a level books that are
already out there, which we can, you know, provide PDF for an even
recommend. There are other interesting books in terms of
Nigel Gilbert has a book called it, he said a philosophy. So there
are books out there which you can touch but what we do is this in
terms of the sessions, when we go into a topic, let's say
cosmological argument, we touch it from the basics all the way to an
advanced level, and then we give you the literature as well. So
yes, there's a there will be things available Inshallah, in
terms of, you know, pre reading material and post reading material
and even if you want advanced material will provide that as
well. Inshallah, it's all about interaction terms of the pupils
and students, the more they want to interact, the more we give them
Inshallah, so, we will provide somebody material in terms of on
the website, as you know, as a pre preliminary kind of thing.
Somebody's in the fifth year of volume course, will the difficile
cost benefit me it will benefit you if you've got the time. Right,
it will benefit you. I mean, there's no doubt about that,
because it's, it's quite easy. It's not as challenging as a fifth
one, I think, because there's just a lot of things that you have to
listen to and kind of interact with. I don't think it's as
difficult as a free course neither as difficult as a theology course.
It will definitely benefit you. You just have to see whether
how much time you've got if you've got the time come along, I think
it will be a benefit inshallah.
The SIBO a course is online, but the one difference with the SIBO a
course and the other courses is that the other ones you don't have
to listen live. You can listen to the recordings later.
And then you could interact on the forum. But the SIBO one, you're
going to have to be online live, because the teacher is going to
listen to you reads. And you know, help you understand that. So you
can't do that on a forum. Right? You can't just listen to that if
you want to, you can, but you're not going to get, you're not going
to get the real benefit out of it that you should, of course, you
can sign up if that's your last resort, and you got no other
option for it. But really, we'd like you to be live on this one.
Of course, you can online, email us courses at zamzam at white
thread institute.org, from the website and so on. And now all the
courses are open for you to sign up. I do want to mention that
I know some of the courses may seem very expensive compared to
what you may have even paid for your Alim course, because only
because they're generally quite cheap. In most madrasahs they've
tried to keep because they subsidize it. But here we want to
show that it's a commitment you have to make. But don't be daunted
by the fact that if you can't pay even last year, we tried to help
out as many students as possible. And I don't think we returned
anyway. We tried to find a way to accommodate anybody who's serious
about their studies. We want good students if you can't pay, we will
try to help you by getting the funding inshallah for that so
don't feel embarrassed to ask inshallah. Just like a little
Heron Baraka Luffy calm